Meet Michael Ford, the hip hop architect
The American Midwest is shaking up the world of architecture. Our profile series, part of our Next Generation 2022 project, explores exciting young studios presenting bold ideas for a better future for the built environment. Meet Michael Ford
![A group of kids with colourful t-shirts with Chicago in the background](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/KRKArkyy7jiXXZBFjEfK6b-415-80.jpg)
Michael Ford is a busy man. The Detroit-born, Maddison-based architect not only heads the small but dynamic studio, Brandnu Design, focusing on architecture, community engagement, textiles, and fashion; he also spearheads the Hip Hop Architecture Camp, ‘an international initiative which uses hip-hop culture as a catalyst to introduce underrepresented youth to architecture, design, and urban planning in a culturally relevant way’.
The camp is an initiative of Muundo Inc, a Wisconsin-based non-profit organisation that Ford started in 2016 (the same year Brandu Design was founded), and it’s an exciting, refreshing and an important project. Its programme is 100 per cent free for all who take part and encompasses a paid internship scheme that places top camp participants in architecture and design firms across the globe.
Michael Ford: rethinking architecture and design
Architect Michael Ford, photographed by Hugo Yu at The Robey in Chicago
‘My work is defined by my love of Black music. The ingenuity exhibited throughout history by Black musicians is what drives me to rethink approaches to architecture and design,’ Ford explains. ‘I position hip hop culture as the post-occupancy evaluation of modernism. Meaning that hip hop offers an unsolicited, unfiltered, and raw critique of the places and spaces where the culture was born and where it lives today.’
He continues: ‘My work extracts the rhythms, patterns, textures, and structures which are unique to the elements of hip hop culture and converts them to architectural rhythms, patterns, textures and structures.’
Poster using Michael Ford's textile series [W]raps!, which converts raps into design
His work, Ford reiterates, is centred on social justice and the built environment, striving to challenge the standard approaches to architecture and design – and drawing parallels between those and music.
‘Architecture lacks diversity. Less than three per cent of licensed architects in the United States are African American! How will architecture look and what impact can we have if we have more practitioners of colour? That’s a question I constantly ask myself,’ he says.
Hip Hop Architecture Camp products
Ford’s voice is powerful and his energy seemingly endless. In addition to his work for Hip Hop Architecture Camp, he is also president of the Wisconsin Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA), while recent and current projects span plans for the Universal Hip Hop Museum in The Bronx, preparations for a rap-inspired textile and fashion line, and a range of public appearances including a short film on the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Super Soul Sunday. Still, his most significant recent achievement, he confesses, is ‘becoming a dad’.
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
Mock-up of the use of [W]raps! collection textiles in interiors
INFORMATION
A version of this article appears in the January 2022 issue of Wallpaper* (W*273). Subscribe today!
Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
IM Pei's Everson Museum of Art gets a modern makeover
The East Wing of the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY has been given a contemporary refresh by emerging Los Angeles studio MILLIØNS
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Black Modernism’s lesser-known, at-risk architecture gems gain a lifeline
Conserving Black Modernism announces vital funding to save and preserve overlooked and endangered buildings by African American architects and designers
By Bridget Downing Published
-
Step into the Blanton Museum of Art's reimagined public realm by Snøhetta in Austin
Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas is completed and reveals its reimagined public realm and plaza designed by Snøhetta
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
This New York Townhouse renovation is a lesson in contemporary minimalism
TenBerke’s carefully considered New York townhouse is the reimagining of a century-old Manhattan structure that reframes vertical living
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Visit The Frost House, a lesser-known modernist architecture marvel in Michigan City
The Frost House is a lesser-known midcentury architecture gem in Michigan City, Indiana; we took the tour as the property goes on the market
By Audrey Henderson Published
-
Broadway designer Scott Pask’s Arizona retreat is a scene-stealing discovery
Scott Pask invites us inside his Arizona retreat, nestled in the foothills overlooking Tucson – a place to reboot, recharge and commune with nature
By Michael Webb Published
-
Upstate New York retreat Ridge House evokes land art
Ridge House in upstate New York, the work of Brooklyn-based studio Worrell Yeung, is at one with the surrounding countryside
By Ellie Stathaki Published
-
Rafael de Cárdenas’ first ground-up project is a forever home with waterfront views and hidden treasures
Rafael de Cárdenas reveals his latest completed project in the Pacific Northwest, a family home of calming spaces that bleed the outside in, and ten years in the making
By Ellie Stathaki Published